convergence

Gilman, Goldhammer, and Weber
both are present in virtually every globalizing platform: we may be disgusted by men who go
online to prearrange their sexual liaisons before their Thai holiday, but their use of the Internet
as an information service is not technically different from someone prearranging a trek in Chiang
Mai. Moreover, a Chinese shipping company delivering a container of illegally harvested
Burmese hardwood to a furniture manufacturer in Italy may be doing something illicit, but
that makes it no less a part of the synchronized global intermodal shipping system, and the
burgeoning cell phone networks of Pakistan are just as useful to Afghan heroin wholesalers
as they are to members of the Pakistani diaspora sending remittances to their families back
home. The infrastructure of the global economy is dual-use and value-neutral. As these systems
become increasingly efficient, interconnected, and indispensable, they help not only the formal
global economy to grow but also its conjoined, deviant twin.
Consider the situation in Mexico today, which illustrates well the dynamics of deviant
globalization. Whereas mainstream accounts of globalization’s economic impact on Mexico
usually focus on topics such as maquiladoras (production facilities across the Mexican border
that are tightly tied to export channels into the United States), wage arbitrage (the substitution
of low-wage Mexican labor for American labor), and economic dependency on the United
States, appreciating the significance of deviant globalization shifts the focus onto other flows,
such as humans and drugs heading north, as well as guns and money heading south. Meeting
Western appetites for illicit drugs has generated vast fortunes in Mexico. This drug money,
in turn, funds a narcotics production, transshipment, and wholesaling industry that, by some
estimates, directly employs upward of half a million people, larger than the entire Mexican oil
and gas industry. 3 Whereas mainstream accounts of globalization’s political impact on Mexico
emphasize the loss of sovereign governance capacity to the North American Free Trade Agreement,
International Money Fund, and multinational corporations, examining Mexico through
the lens of deviant globalization highlights the way that some drug-trafficking organizations
have emerged as cripplers of supposedly sovereign governments to a far greater extent than
structural adjustment programs ever have. 4
The dynamic in Mexico is not some outlier or exception, but rather is emblematic of deviant
globalization’s rapidly growing systemic threat to international stability and security. An
incomplete understanding of the systemic nature of deviant globalization, however, continues
to lead many governments to implement poorly designed policy interventions that in many
cases are not only ineffective but also counterproductive.
We believe that policy can do better. Deviant globalization, like globalization more
broadly, is a systems phenomenon that requires a systems-oriented solution. Powerful economic
and political forces are driving (deviant) globalization forward. But many aspects of
how those forces manifest in markets remain subject to shaping interventions. We need to
understand these forces and their interdependencies before we pull policy levers. And, faced
with complexity and hard choices, we must avoid adopting a kind of fatalistic attitude that
cuts off debate and action. The fatalism we find most politically dysfunctional is to paint any
argument that questions the status quo as calling for rampant, indiscriminate “legalization”
of illicit businesses and using that objection to shut down alternatives. We argue later that
particular aspects of deviant globalization would be better dealt with through simple legalization,
but not all. Creative regulation and enforcement can serve as finely grained tools, with
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